Princess Celestia
Princess Celestia, or THE Princess, is the ruler of Equestria in . Despite this high-profile position, she is usually a fairly minor character in the show proper. Celestia is a princess pony who rules jointly with her younger sister Luna. Celestia is generally stoic and wise, and incredibly patient, but has shown several very bad signs of being mischievous and at times outright scheming. Also, the usual events of a Formspring RP are much more trying on a girl's patience than anything in the show. Celestia maintains the inherent ability to control the sun, although in the past this and control of the moon were powers of unicorns in general; the precise mechanics of her and Luna's rise to power and exclusivity over the sun and moon are unknown. History The details of Celestia's and Luna's early lives and the means by which they came into power are unknown; they are not mentioned in the story of Equestria's founding, where unicorns as a whole were responsible for the sun and the moon. All that is known is that Celestia and Luna were formerly linked to the Elements of Harmony and that they utilized these items to defeat Discord, who was "reigning" over the country at the time; it is hinted that he was attracted by the chaos and anarchy when the acting rulers were afflicted with Love Poison, allowing him to take over whilst no ruler could oppose him. The amount of time between Discord's taking over and his defeat is not known, nor whether Celestia and / or Luna were ruling before his arrival, nor whether they took rule immediately after his defeat or some amount of time later. The Longest Night As time passed, Luna became jealous of Celestia, as ponies generally appreciated the day and not so much the night - most ponies slept through the majority of the night, although there were (and are) a minority of creatures and ponies who stayed up for much or all of the night. Her dark feelings presumably separated her from the Elements, and definitely transformed her into Nightmare Moon. She then attacked Celestia and threatened to leave the night to last forever. Celestia utilized the Elements of Harmony (though it is not known how she utilized HARMONY when she was ostensibly alone) to seal her sister into the moon for a thousand years. Show events The Second Longest Night Celestia sent Twilight Sparkle to Ponyville to oversee the preparation for the Summer Sun Celebration and "make some friends". This was actually necessary so that Twilight and her friends could utilize the Elements of Harmony to defeat Nightmare Moon, the superpowered evil version of Luna, who captured Celestia through unknown means and attempted to bring eternal night again. Defeating Nightmare Moon returned the day to Equestria, and reverted Luna to a weakened, mundane form, although now a good girl again. The Ticket Master Celestia sends Twilight two tickets to the Grand Galloping Gala when she has six friends, in order to... teach her about the important of not playing favorites or... something. Twilight eventually returns both tickets saying that she can't pick one of her friends over another, and Celestia retorts whimsically that she ought to have said so in the first place, sending enough for all six of the girls and Spike. Bird in the Hoof Celestia brings Philomena, who is near a rebirth and not looking well, to Ponyville and leaves her unattended with her cage unlocked in the presence of Fluttershy (almost undoubtedly on purpose.) This results in Fluttershy and Twilight trying to "treat" Philomena's apparent illness, as neither of them recognize her as a phoenix, possibly due to panic over the Princess's pet potentially dying under their care - this becomes especially stressful once the Royal Guard are dispatched in town to find the bird. Philomena gives them a lot of trouble, all the way up to performing a very melodramatic and fiery "death" from the top of a statue. Celestia simply plucks her reborn form from her ashes, waits for her to return to her usual splendor, and forces her to apologize for tormenting the girls. The Best Night Ever Celestia was present for a particular Grand Galloping Gala wherein Twilight and her friends ended up crashing the party. Celestia had apparently hoped for them to do so to liven up the proceedings, as she is thrilled by the disastrous results to a seemingly out-of-character level and does nothing to punish any of them for the chaos or property damage. The Chocolate Rain After Discord's return from his seal, Celestia did not attempt to combat him directly. She instead left Twilight and the others to deal with him while she scoured her files for Twilight's friendship letters, to send to her and make sure she didn't lose hope in harmony. This resulted in Spike suffering from severe stomach problems, but it did bring Twilight back from depression, allowing her to restore her friends to their normal states and seal Discord a second time. The World Changes Even Celestia was unable to detect that Cadance had been imprisoned and was being impersonated by Chrysalis, who intended to absorb the misguided love of Shining Armor at their wedding to conquer Canterlot and then all of Equestria. However, she knew that something was amiss, and utilized the fact that Twilight was Shining's sister as her cover for inviting the Elements of Harmony to oversee the wedding, hoping they would catch onto whatever she wasn't seeing. Celestia was so effectively fooled (or was perhaps trying to be meta) that she scolded Twilight along with the others when Twilight called the false Cadance out as evil, which turned out to be right on the money right down to all of the evidence. Due to this and her pressing duty to join the couple in marriage, Celestia did not look for Twilight, who was imprisoned with the real Cadance underneath Canterlot in some ancient crystal caverns. When Twilight returned with the real Cadance to expose the deception, not only did Chrysalis break the barrier around Canterlot that Shining was supplying, but she became powerful enough to knock Celestia straight across the room without much trouble. Both of these losses on Celestia's part were witnessed by all of the Element Bearers and were most likely rather embarrassing.